Chapter 4- Tiptoeing Onwards.

Jacob doesn't return. When my tears abate I spend the rest of the night huddled up on the window seat with my forehead pressed to the glass, waiting for the sight of the wolf pacing through the trees to greet my eyes. It never comes.

I cannot take back what I said and I want Jacob to go, but the idea of that being the last thing I will say to him makes my soul writhe with the pain of it. I want to see him again, to say sorry and try to make him understand why I am doing this. It's not that I don't love you, but that I love you enough to let you go. I'm just trying to give both of us something that we've never had. But the next day comes, and then another night and day and there is no Jacob and I realise with a bleak, hopeless feeling of grief that I have done my work too well and he is not going to return.

I can't get out of bed. I would not have thought that doing something I know is right and that I wanted to do could hurt so much. Jacob still doesn't return to the house and I feel his absence like a physical ache in my heart. My Jacob, my own…I am so sorry I can't be what you want me to be!

My grief covers the whole house in a pall of gloom. Jasper bears the brunt of it, and such is his suffering alongside me that he can't help but reflect sadness outwards, touching all the others with the unhappiness.

It isn't only that though. For all Jacob was not really one of them, he had his place here and missing him in his absence comes from surprising quarters. Carlisle and Esme speak to him on the phone, and Rosalie goes out to the garage and relieves her feelings by working on the half built Corvette Jacob left there. None of them say anything to me, but I know they miss him and I add the guilt of that to the massive load weighing me down.

I wrap myself in my blankets and try and seek comfort in tears, but there is nothing that can make this better. I have hurt the one person in my life who has never done anything but put me first and love me unconditionally and unreservedly, and I feel like a monster.

They give me a week. A week in which I lie in bed and sob and flagellate myself emotionally with all guilt and pain I've caused. Then the morning comes when Alice, Esme, Rosalie and Mom all march into my room and yank the curtains open, flooding the room with light and making me blink with the sudden intrusion.

"Time to get up!" Esme says cheerfully, seizing the end of my quilt and yanking it off me before I can react. "Laundry day, my love!"

"Hey!" I scrunch myself tighter into a ball, squinting at them through the messy chestnut hair that's falling across my face. "I was asleep…just because you don't sleep doesn't mean you shouldn't respect my need for some rest."

Rosalie snorts. "You've had more than enough rest. You've been in bed for a week and you need to get up." She frowns at me disdainfully. "And wash that hair Renesmee, ugh!"

I scowl furiously. "Go away!"

Alice shakes her head. "Nope. We're not going anywhere until you get out of that bed and change those clothes." She looks down at my pyjamas, which consist of a pair of boy leg knickers and one of Emmett's old band t shirts from some obscure 90's group and sighs mournfully. "Will you ever let me buy you some proper sleepwear? You're the only one in the house that sleeps and you just don't take advantage of the wardrobe options that gives you!"

I look pleadingly up at Mom, who brushes her hands through my hair, smoothing it away from my face. "Mommy…I'm too sad to get up," I whisper.

Mom bites her lip but shakes her head. "I know you're sad baby. But you have to get up…if you don't get up then we'll have no choice but to call Jacob."

I sit up in a rush. "You wouldn't dare!"

"I don't want to," Mom whips the bottom sheet out from under me, and I only just save myself from falling onto the floor, instead finding myself standing up beside them without meaning to and glaring at them indignantly. "But if you can't function without Jacob, I'm not just going to let you wither away in bed," Mom says firmly, and the other three nod.

"No one really understands how imprinting works," Esme adds gently. "This has never been an ordinary relationship. We don't know what this is going to do to you to send him away. You've never been apart from Jacob since the day you were born…we're worried sweetie."

Rosalie hugs me and strokes my hair. Okay, if she's willing to touch my manky, unwashed hair then she must be really worried. I sigh in defeat.

"Okay…I'm up."

"Good." They bundle me into the bathroom and run the tub, then push me in and wash my hair. It's like being an invalid, or a baby again, and I sit meekly and let them do what they want. They don't even leave me alone to dry, but rub me briskly with towels and then Alice heads to the closet to fetch me some clothes.

"No dresses!" I call after her, hearing her disgusted huff. "Not a skirt, either!"

"You really are your mother's daughter," she says when she returns, her hands full of jeans and t shirts. "It's really terribly unfair that the two of you don't let me dress you up!"

Mom looks at me and winks, and I smile back. I'm sorry I was so awful to her the other day. I know she loves me and wants only the best. I reach over and squeeze her hands and she squeezes back and I know I'm forgiven.

They hand me all my clothes but at least let me put them on myself. The fancy underwear first, which is something Rosalie has always bought for me when she buys hers. She has an obsession with beautiful and expensive lingerie and she's taught me to love it too. In that way I'm different to Mom, who would still buy six packs of cottontails from the supermarket if Alice would allow it in the house. And even if I'd rather wear jeans or cargos and combat boots and graphic tees, that doesn't mean I don't appreciate some beautiful, girly silks and satins and laces underneath them. I throw on my jeans and grin when I realise Alice has handed me the 'bite me' t-shirt that my dad hates so much. Emmett's the one who gave it to me and he thinks it's hilarious. Almost as hilarious as the 'vampires suck' t-shirt he bought for himself at the same time.

Rosalie pushes me down onto the seat by the dressing table and starts combing out my hair. As Mom and Esme pick through the mess of hair things, jewellery and oddments I've got scattered across the top and begin tidying up, Alice goes back to the closet for shoes.

"Boots," I shout, knowing that if I don't insist she'll be out with a pair of heels. "MY boots, Alice!" Mom giggles as we both hear Alice sob. She comes out a moment later with my chunky soled, beat up black leather lace up boots dangling from her fingertips like they're crawling with maggots.

"Ness," she says patiently, "Are we in a war zone?"

"Depends on dad and Rosalie…ouch!" (as Rose pulls my hair) "Okay! No."

"Are you in a skinhead gang?"

"No."

"Do you plan on going about stamping on insects and small children?"

"Not today."

"Do you have some orthopaedic issue with your feet which requires correction and that I'm unaware of?"

"No.

"Then why?" Alice wails, shaking the boots at me. "Why do you insist on wearing these terrible shoes with everything? You're not even clumsy like Bella was- you could dance like a ballerina in stilettos if you wanted to! And yet every day it's these dreadful boots…they're not even new!"

"They're comfortable," I say equally patiently, and both Alice and I give identical long suffering sighs as the others laugh and Rosalie finishes braiding my hair.

Mom pauses in her tidying up, the braided Quileute bracelet Jacob gave me on my first Christmas in her hand. Until I wrenched it off a week ago I have worn it every day since he gave it to me, and my wrist looks naked without it as I look down at my arms. I can feel my lip tremble.

"Never mind," Mom says softly, pulling out the bottom drawer of the jewellery box and dropping the bracelet in. She glances up at Rosalie who takes hold of my arm with her cool fingers and briskly fastens something else around my wrist.

It's my Cullen wrist cuff, soft black leather with the Cullen crest on it in silver, the same one all the boys have. I have it on a necklace like the girls too, but when I kept borrowing Dad's wrist band (which was miles too big) and Carlisle realised that despite her best efforts Alice was not going to be able to turn me into the girly-girl princess of her dreams he had a wrist cuff made especially for me. I touch it gently and then look up, seeing the reflections in the mirror of all us Cullen women. Esme, Rosalie, Alice, Bella…and me.

"Now that you're up and dressed you can have your reward," Esme says lightly. "I baked you cookies sweetie. I even sent Carlisle out for m&m's so they're just the way you like them."

"Oh, thank you!" I give Esme a genuine smile.

"Then we're all going to Oregon," Mom informs me. "Carlisle's got a meeting with the hospital board and we're going to check out the house and go up to the school and enrol." She can't hide the anxious quirk of her eyebrows as she looks at me. "If you still want to go to school and do that?"

I nod firmly. Sending Jacob away will have all been for nothing if I don't have the courage to try new experiences without his steady back up. "I still want to." I tie my boot laces firmly. "But first I'm going to eat my cookies."

The five of us sweep down the stairs and into the kitchen, led by the delicious smell of peanut butter m&m cookies, my all-time favourite. Jasper is reading the newspaper at the table and Emmett is sitting beside him with his arms folded, staring morosely at the plate of cookies.

"You are so lucky, Monster," he says to me sadly. "You can hunt and you can eat food. Because damn it but those cookies smell good and I remember how good they taste!"

I smirk at him and sit down across from him, taking a cookie and stuffing half of it in to my mouth in one bite. It is good. Despite not having eaten food for over eighty years Esme is still a good cook and baking is her speciality. Mostly I cook for myself since I'm the only one who eats the food, but I can't bake like Esme can.

I can eat human food or drink blood like the others. When I was first born I preferred blood, especially the human blood that Carlisle was able to buy, but after we met Nahuel and found out that my freakish growth patterns would slow and weren't going to be a death sentence Carlisle refused to supply human blood for me anymore. He said that I had other options and the blood should go to people who needed it more. I admit I pouted and scowled like the child I was, but I think he was right and as my moral development caught up with my physical development I was glad he made that choice. It was certainly easier for Jasper not having all the bags of human blood around too.

I used to hunt with them a lot, because it was fun and I was a show off, but as I've grown older I find myself leaning more towards a diet of human food, even if it does mean I have to use the bathroom like a human occasionally, something that can basically be avoided if I exist solely on blood. Since I've stopped growing I've also noticed that I don't need to eat nearly as much or as often, although I'm never going to say no to Esme's cookies.

Jasper grins at me across the table as I eat my cookies, and I smile back. The relief is clear on his face, and I feel a stab of guilt as I realise again how much my wallowing in grief and pain over this past week must have hurt him.

He shakes his head. "No guilt, Nessie, please. I'm just glad you're feeling more cheerful, and I'm sorry I couldn't do more for you." His eyes are soft and sympathetic. "Some hurts are just too big for me to influence away."

I nod, having some trouble swallowing my cookie through my choked throat. Luckily I'm distracted by Dad coming in the door with Carlisle. Carlisle smiles at me, and although Dad looks relieved to see me up and dressed again he frowns when he looks at my t shirt.

"Do you have to wear that t shirt when we're going to enrol in school?" he sighs.

"I didn't know that's what we were going to do when I put it on," I say defensively. "Besides, why not? It's funny. It's a joke…"

"He doesn't like it because people look at your boobs when they read it," Emmett says casually.

"Emmett!" Dad and Rosalie shout in unison, with Dad adding furiously, "That's my daughter you're thinking about, and remember I can read your mind!"

"I'm just saying," Emmett protests with an air of injured innocence.

I'm laughing though, with the first genuine belly laugh I've had in days. "Perv," I say to Emmett affectionately. He really is like the annoying big brother I've never had and I think that at least there's one part of this new family pretence I'm going to have to learn that's going to come naturally. I take another cookie and look over at Carlisle. "When are we leaving?"